Saturday, April 13, 2013

Orwell's "1984" Becoming a Reality in 2013?

The fictional story of George Orwell's book entitled "1984" is becoming more of a reality with each passing decade.  All of the advances in technology have helped our world tremendously, but the misuse of it all (when put in the wrong hands of power)  also works, unfortunately, towards the detriment of our privacy, liberty, and freedom.

This weekend, Fox News is reporting on How Will Big Data Impact Your Privacy? Your Secret's Out and gives us points to ponder:

Sunday, April 14 at 9 p.m. ET Hosted by John Roberts

Every step we take, every move we make, "Big Data" is watching us. Our computers, phones and countless other devices are generating long trails of electronic data -- information that can be stored and analyzed who-knows-where for who-knows-what by who-knows-who.

When our lives can be retrieved at the stroke of a key, what happens to privacy? Does the government become too powerful?

Could our traditional freedoms be threatened and do we care?

This weekend, Fox News delves into the world of daily data and examines stories that would have seemed entirely unconnected only a few years ago: Government whistleblowers fretting about a mysterious new spy center in the Utah desert.

A Massachusetts teacher instructing grade-schoolers on what not to do with an iPhone.

A new breed of political operatives leading an unprecedented get-out-the-vote effort.

A California entrepreneur trying to mine data from social networking sites.

In today's world, it all ties together. And in 'Fox News Reporting: Your Secret's Out' we're connecting the dots.
 
Read Catherine Herridge's article:


Fox News.com: NSA data center front and center in debate over liberty, security and privacy,


Excerpt:


Twenty-five miles due south of Salt Lake City, a massive construction project is nearing completion. The heavily secured site belongs to the National Security Agency.

"The spy center" -- that's what some of the locals like Jasmine Widmer, who works at Bluffdale's sandwich shop, told our Fox News team as part of an eight month investigation into data collection and privacy rights that will be broadcast Sunday at 9 p.m. ET called "Fox News Reporting: Your Secrets Out.”

The NSA says the Utah Data Center is a facility for the intelligence community that will have a major focus on cyber security. The agency will neither confirm nor deny specifics. Some published reports suggest it could hold 5 zettabytes of data. (Just one zettabyte is the equivalent of about 62 billion stacked iPhones 5's-- that stretches past the moon.

One man we hoped would answer our questions, the current director of the NSA General Keith Alexander, declined Fox News's requests to sit down for an interview, so we stopped by the offices of a Washington think tank, where Alexander was speaking at a cyber security event last year.

Asked if the Utah Data Center would hold the data of American citizens, Alexander said, "No...we don't hold data on U.S. citizens," adding that the NSA staff "take protecting your civil liberties and privacy as the most important thing that they do, and securing this nation."

But critics, including former NSA employees, say the data center is front and center in the debate over liberty, security and privacy.

"[It] raises the most serious questions about the vast amount of data that could be kept in one place for many, many different sources," Thomas Drake told Fox News.
 
Drake -- who worked at the NSA from Aug. 2001 to Aug. 2008 and was unsuccessfully prosecuted on espionage charges -- says Americans should be concerned about letting the government go too far in the name of security.

"It's in secret so you don't really know," Drake explained. "It's benign, right. If I haven't -- and if I haven't done anything wrong it doesn't matter. The only way you can have perfect security is have a perfect surveillance state. That's George Orwell. That's 1984. That's what that would look like."


Read the rest: Fox News.com

Consider the fact that such a monstrosity of data collection COULD BE BLATANTLY ABUSED. Remember that this ObaMARXIST BADministration has an attorney general who believes they should "never let a good crisis go to waste." Our current government is headed by the worst political criminals ever in the history of the United States of America!

The Bible informs us about what we need to know in order to be saved and enjoy life eternal with God in heaven.  What's more,  Bible prophecy is being fulfilled right before our very own eyes!  It is astonishing to me that people refuse to study the prophetic sections of the Bible - especially the book of Revelation.  It helps to put everything that is going on in this world in perspective.

If this world was all that we were meant for, then we would be discouraged, distraught, depressed, and without genuine hope.  However, we were not meant for this world!

As Christians believers, we are  Not Of This World  [NOTW] because Jesus' Kingdom is not of this world!

Jhn 8:23 And He said to them, "You are from beneath; I am from above. You are of this world; I am not of this world.

Jhn 18:36 Jesus answered, "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would fight, so that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now My kingdom is not from here."

*******

Recommended site to visit:

American Prophet.org

Quote for the day:

Remember That the Lord Himself Is Your Chief Reward

In Genesis 15:1, we find God making this statement to Abram:  "Do not be afraid Abram.  I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward."  God was making great promises to Abram in those days about his future, and it would have been possible to be both fearful of the future and prideful about the blessings God was going to bestow.  But God reminds Abram that He, God, is Abram's true reward.  Land and descendants and blessing would be nothing apart from God in his life.

~  Dr. David Jeremiah

8 comments:

GMpilot said...

Fox 'News' should consider itself lucky; during my service days in the early '80s, a book was published called The Puzzle Palace, about the inner workings of the NSA. I was working in Intelligence at the time, and we were told not only not to confirm or deny whether any of the book's information was true (very few of us could have known that), we were also told to not even acknowledge the book's existence!
It was a common joke at the time that the letters NSA stood for “No Such Agency”. Things are a little different now; people know who they are.

Of course such massive amounts of information can be abused, but that's always been true; in the former DDR (East Germany) the Stasi had so much data on so many people that the government is still
finding (and releasing) it, nearly twenty-five years after the collapse of Communism there. They have also found that much of it is useless, like where Mr. R. ate on the afternoon of 12 May 1981.
The point is that there were no iPhones back then, and they still acquired the information. Politicians, policemen, reporters, and advertisers all all do this; only the purpose is different. All that's needed is their own sharp eyes and ears, and someone else's loose tongue. That's usually how anyone's secrets become known.

The majority of information acquired these days is from (and for) people who want to sell you something. Most will ask only for the basic stuff: name, address, etc. Others want to know more: what you like to eat, where you like to shop, what brands you prefer, what sports you watch or play, what TV networks/shows you watch, your religion (and which sect), your politics, the kind of car you drive, the size of your family. A great deal of that can be deduced from those answers.
Both the Dems and the GOP sent me mail within a week of my turning 21, and I never wrote to them! AARP has done the same thing over the past few years and I'd never contacted them either.
I also didn't need the NSA, or an iPhone, to find you.

“1984” is not meant to be an instruction manual; Orwell was merely extrapolating from already-existent methods in his time (1948). The citizens of Oceania were involved in an endless war in a distant part of the world in that story, too. Sound familiar?
Bear in mind that there are some people who believe that merely answering the census encroaches on their “freedom”!

Consider this quote attributed to Cardinal Richelieu, 17th-century French clergyman/statesman:
”If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.”
You don't need the NSA for that. A corrupt small-town sheriff will do just as well.

Christinewjc said...

Thanks for that additional information, GM. It was very interesting.

As far as "answering the census" goes, I did a post way back in 2010 entitled, Harassed By American Community Survey People?

It seems that almost every day, (according to my stats) someone visits that post to read it. I used the letter included in the post when I was being harassed to fill it out, and when I did, the phonecalls and visits stopped.

About Sheriff Arpaio. It depends on the ideology of the person writing the article whether or not he's considered "corrupt." He was recently targeted when someone sent him a bomb in the mail.

Perhaps the ObaMARXIST BADministration is worried that his investigation might eventually expose the truth about the fraudulent birth certificate!

The Obama Hustle: Obama's birth certificate documentation now publicly declared a forgery by the legal Sheriff Arpaio Investigation

It even made the headline over at Drudge! No wonder Carney & Co. don't want people to read the Drudge Report!

Christinewjc said...

The Obama Hustle was a linkage post. The original post is located here:

Moral Matters.org

GMpilot said...

CJW: ”About Sheriff Arpaio. It depends on the ideology of the person writing the article whether or not he's considered "corrupt." He was recently targeted when someone sent him a bomb in the mail.

Perhaps the ObaMARXIST BADministration is worried that his investigation might eventually expose the truth about the fraudulent birth certificate!”


”t depends on the ideology of the person writing the article whether or not he's considered 'corrupt.'
See, you've just answered your own question!
He's been 'investigating' for...what, four years now? He's announced—twice--that he's got the goods. But he won't submit them to anyone; not his local DA, not the state AG, not the FBI, not even a select group of reporters. Nobody. He's a career lawman, and he knows if he does, he'll have to sit in a courtroom and tell exactly how he obtained his documents, and from who, and if they're public, they can be compared to what is known to be fact...and he knows he'll fail. He hasn't the 'nads to do that.
But he and his CCP are still sucking up donations. I'd call that corrupt.

GMpilot said...

What I told you is all public knowledge (and a little personal experience). I suppose I shouldn't be surprised you didn't know this, being a webmistress and all, but...I guess that's what comes of being Not Of This World.
On the other hand, that puts you off the radar, doesn't it? But it also makes you a 'foreign national', and therefore Someone To Be Watched.

“Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the Man come and take you away...”


Good luck with that, hostess.

Christinewjc said...

Ooooh! A brief compliment by me to you turns into a nasty retort. Must have struck a raw nerve to get you into such a tizzy.

But I shouldn't be surprised. Your boy Obummer "can do no wrong" in your distorted mind.

You apparently don't care one bit that a Sheriff was targeted to be killed. Hmmm....

And...your second comment makes you sound just like the commies in the age of ObamaFRAUD.

Good luck with that...not only here but in eternity.

GMpilot said...

I appreciated the compliment, but I knew it wouldn't last.

You didn't seem to care when a Congresswoman was targeted, a while back. He failed to kill her, but some other people got dead in the name of '2nd Amendment solutions'.

Y'know, I went to that site, and with all the verbiage spilled there, I couldn't find a single sentence quoting what Sheriff Joe actually said. You'd think if he really said something, his actual words would be there, wouldn't you? After eight paragraphs?
All the news reports about the bomb attempt actually quoted words Joe spoke at his press conference: ABC, CNN, even Huffington Post. But Moral Matters, which sure looks to be an Arpaio-friendly site, reports nothing that he said concerning this historic and legal precedent of arresting a sitting Chief Executive. Isn't that strange...
MM is still pimping for donations for Arpaio, however.

If it's true, Arpaio has conclusive evidence that a crime has been committed. He knows what the laws require him to do; inform state (and possibly federal) authorities. He's an investigator, not a prosecutor, and he has no authority to fly to D.C. and arrest anyone.
But he will be a star. Justice will be seen to be done. The world will know his name. History will know his name. Birfers everywhere will feel righteous and justified. What more could an 80-year-old small-town sheriff ask for? But he also knows he'll have to go through all that 'legal' stuff first; he can't just slap pink underwear on Obama and toss him in the clink.
His evidence must be presented, examined, and verified in order to be valid. If he won't show it, that would make people suspect that he hasn't got any. He'll have to give the full story: Who, What, Where, When, Why and How he got his information. He'll have to name his sources—this will be much too important to the nation to allow for anonymity. Everyone associated with this will be subpoenaed. He'll be cross-examined into infinity, and he has enough experience to know all of that. It will all take years, of course, which he might not live through due to his age.

If it's not true, well...we all know the answer to that.

Right-wingers are more likely to persecute their own. It's just possible that someone's gotten tired of Arpaio's dog-and-pony show and is trying to generate some “action”.

I won't need luck in eternity. I won't need anything.

GMpilot said...

from Moral Matters.com:

Excerpt from the short youtube.com Freedom Friday video:
Carl Gallups:
<<<<<<<< “……Again, Lt. Zullo and I, cannot, and will not give anyone exacting details and names and dates and times and places. Of course the Obamabots would love for us to do that, so that they could attack the people who are involved, in this big Plan A, that is on its way.”
Okay: they didn't quote Sheriff Joe because Sheriff Joe didn't actually say anything. It was his sock puppets Zullo and Gallups doing all the talking. According to MM, Obama's documentation was 'officially' declared a forgery on the 4th of April, almost two weeks ago. It is to be supposed that Joe has finally set the machinery of the law into motion—that the Phoenix DA and the Arizona AG, at least, now have copies of this evidence.
Be sure to let us know when it goes public. Otherwise, I shall have to remind you now and then that nothing's happening.